Tom-464's Reviews

Battleship (2012)

8/10

A lot more fun for people who know Navy culture

27 May 2012

This movie has gotten a lot of ... let's say, less than favorable reviews - mostly from people to whom the Navy is a "black box," who don't know things that are taken for granted by the Navy characters in it. However, if you know the lingo and the traditions and just generally the way things work in the Navy, you'll like it a lot more, because you'll understand it a lot more.

One example (and to stay spoiler-free, I'm not going to tie it to anything specific in the movie) is the meaning and uses of the title "Captain" aboard a Navy ship. Another is the difference between the meanings of "boat" and "ship" - a gaffe in the script.

OK; all that stuff out of the way, I really liked the movie. It was fun, exciting, and (as the best SF does) says some meaningful things about the human condition. It's not a classic, nor was it intended to be; but it is great summer entertainment - which it WAS intended to be.

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Priest (2011)

4/10

SO much less than it could - should - have been

22 May 2011

I had to scroll down a (seemingly) interminable list of credits to get to the review section here. You'd think that a movie with that many people working on it would have been better.

As it is, it's basically one "monster of the minute" after another, linked with moments of interaction between the main characters. I know: monster of the minute sells tickets; but it doesn't make good movies.

There's SO much possibility in the interrelationships between the characters. Pick just about any two of them (except the monsters of the minute, of course), and there's a wealth of possibility that's just not there. It's probably not even on the famous cutting-room floor (or are the cuttings all just electrons these days?) - odds are, it never even entered the writers' minds to include that wealth.

As the summary says, this movie is so much less than it could have been. And that's a shame.

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Hamlet (2009 TV Movie)

6/10

Doctor Who-mlet, I'm sorry to say...

28 April 2010

There were a lot of good things about this production - my favorite was Polonious' angrily plucking a handkerchief out of Laertes' pocket as he said, "But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; ....". Another of those little touches (like Claudius' speaking to Laertes before Hamlet, as a previous reviewer noted) that speak volumes about the director's skill.

"Hamlet," however, no matter how good the direction or the other performances, revolves around its star as few plays do. And this Hamlet by David Tennant is ... how do I start? Over-acted nearly continuously; almost completely humorless (it puts me in mind of a particularly dreary, and also humorless, Hamlet I once saw in a Russian version); and more evocative of Tennant's portrayal of Dr. Who than of a Danish prince. Hamlet should be the source of the humor in the show, not the cause of it.

The 6 I gave the show was for the direction and the other actors. If Tennant had been up to their quality, I would probably have given it an 8 or a 9. Sigh.

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Earth 2100 (2009 TV Movie)

9/10

But we HAVE to think about it!

22 February 2010

Warning: Spoilers

One previous comment on this movie said "... can't bare (sic) to think about it." We HAVE to bear to think about it. Especially with the failure of the Copenhagen talks, we ARE going to be living in a world with a significantly changed climate. A person's only choice at this point is between sticking his head into the sand (and you know what that leaves sticking up and exposed) and facing the future so we can DO something about it.

This movie has the guts to paint an honest picture of the likely results of that head-in-the-sand approach, and it ain't pretty. I'm sure most people who watched it (or who saw a summary and chose not to watch it) also thought, "I can't bear to think about it." Those who did see it through, though, got a clear idea of why we have to do something now, and also some ideas of things we can do now to prevent, or at least mitigate, the things the movie shows. (That's at the very end - hence the "spoiler" note - but it IS there: stick it through and watch the hopeful part!)

There are movements out there working to mitigate the effects of the coming crisis. The Transition Movement is a major one; your favorite search engine can tell you where to find it. As the "can't bare" writer pointed out, seeing this movie is hard - honesty to that depth IS hard to watch - but the movie is a massively well depicted and presented view of our future if we choose to do nothing.

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Sanctuary: Next Tuesday (2009)

Season 2, Episode 8

7/10

It's gotten better, after a period of doldrums.

6 December 2009

The first episodes of this series were wonderful - smart, funny, character-driven, plot-twisty, and just all-round quality drama.

Now, however, it's devolved into "Will and Magnus battle the monster of the week." There are occasional flashes of the show's former quality ("Veritas," for example), but they're more the exception than the rule nowadays.

Maybe it's money. It's certainly cheaper to pay two principals and a bunch of CGI artists than it is to pay a balanced, quality cast. And it's a whole lot easier (and cheaper) for a script writer to say "5 minutes of mayhem ensues" than to do the work to craft a clever scene - let alone a great episode.

Whatever it is, I hope the producers realize their problems and fix them, soon. I love(d) the earlier episodes; I'm bored by most of the current ones. If I wanted a "monster of the week" show, I'd watch one of those insipid made-for-TV movies that SyFy cranks out in such profusion. THIS SERIES IS - OR CAN BE - ABOVE THAT LEVEL.

~~~~~~~~

OK: it's a year later, and the people in charge of the show SEEM to have learned their lesson. There's more character and less monster, and the series has (IMHO) climbed back out of the slough of despond and into real drama. I've even raised my original rating by 2 stars.

Three cheers!

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Monster Ark (2008 TV Movie)

4/10

You can tell who the professional actors are ...

9 August 2008

Warning: Spoilers

... but even they got overwhelmed by the really bad direction and bad script.

One of the things I judge a film by is its details. The details here are - how do I say this in a family-oriented medium? Lousy. Yeah; that'll do. Take the "Major" (the chief military guy). The stripes on his sleeve say he's a SERGEANT Major, but everybody refers to him as a major, salutes him, and calls him "sir." And while I'm on it, he's a fairly decent actor from the other things I've seen him in, but the director told him to growl every line, and that makes him comes off as an unintended clown.

Speaking of unintentionally funny bits, this movie stole two ideas lock, stock, and barrel from "Raiders of the Lost Ark": first, the 3-D model in the underground cave that shows them where the "treasure" is (they need to have a rod that just happens to be the length of two of their shovel handles, and it has to be noon on a certain day - guess what time and day it is); and second, hiding a box by putting it into a giant government warehouse at the end (that's the "spoiler").

However, after all this, I can't leave without giving Renée O'Connor (Gabrielle from Xena) her due. Basically, she acts rings around just about every other actor in the flick. Trouble is, even her acting can't overcome the problems with the script and the direction. Hmmm; fancy that - the same man wrote and directed this thing. (Insert obvious comment of choice here.)

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King Corn (2007)

10/10

Wow! A sad, tragic - but awesome - documentary

12 November 2007

I knew this movie was going to be good from the trailers and the reviews I'd read, but I didn't expect to be blown away by such an unpretentious little flick. The truth is, it didn't need pretensions - the facts it presents, clearly and without dramatization at all, are plenty enough to make its point.

This is a documentary in the style of the "Columbo" detective series: a pair of friends wander through the Iowa corn industry, discovering things as they go, and showing us what they discover. Simple enough; but what they discover - and show us as they discover it - is a damning indictment not only of the corn industry, but of the entire American way of factory farming.

What's wrong with high fructose corn syrup? Why is grass-fed beef so HUGELY better than corn-fed beef? How do you force land that's been farmed literally to death to produce crops anyway, and bumper crops at that? See this movie; you'll find out.

Naah, on second thought, don't worry about the questions: just see this movie.

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Death at a Funeral (2007)

2/10

A truly awful, mean-spirited attempt at humor

18 August 2007

A lot of people who see "Death at a Funeral" say it's funny. The movie's poster even quotes some reviewers as saying it's funny. It's not. It's a mean-spirited, insulting, pathetic attempt at crude humor, and it fails miserably. If your idea of humor is watching other people be insulted, humiliated, manipulated, and debased, then this is the movie for you. It is not, however, a movie for people with even a modicum of decency, self-respect, or intelligence.

I've been seeing trailers for it for months now; and now that I've seen the movie itself, I understand why. It must have taken the releasing company that long to be able to hold their nose and release it to theaters, rather than directly to DVD, which is where it belongs.

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Babylon 5: The Lost Tales (2007)

5/10

Disappointing

5 August 2007

I'm so used to outstanding work by JMS that this mediocre pair of stories was disappointing. It's not quite as bad as "Grey 17 is Missing," but it's ... well, it's basically the A- and B-stories of an expanded, middle-quality episode, with the stories presented sequentially instead of being intertwined as with most episodes.

The first story is more a Christian polemic than a science-fiction tale; there's barely any science, and the only fiction is the religious component. Sigh. The second tale is much better; it shows what might happen on Centauri Prime after Vir's reign is over. Personally, though, I would much rather see how Vir defeated the Drakh, or what happens to David - or even see how Lyta and/or G'Kar met their ends - than these stories.

I was very touched by the way Andreas Katsulas and Rick Biggs were mentioned in the story - "out exploring beyond the rim" - and the tributes to both of them in the "Extras" section were wonderful.

Babylon 5 is an epic-scale work of literature, and this pair of small-scale tales won't harm it, any more than "Grey 17" did; but I reeeealy hope the next tale(s) get back to the quality and the content we've come to know and love (and expect) from JMS.

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El rey pasmado (1991)

10/10

A wonderful film that didn't make it to the US

22 January 2000

This movie is about a Spanish king in the middle ages who decides one day that he'd like to see his wife naked. Gasp! The courtiers are appalled; his wife says ... "Why not?"; and the church begins an investigation. Out of all the hoohah over what today seems an ordinary request, only one man stands up for the king -- a Jesuit priest. The movie's depiction of the various reactions to the king's request is always interesting, and sometimes fascinating. It's a stylish, colorful production, and never lacks for beauty. The only problem I had with it was that I saw it in Paris, in Spanish with French subtitles, and so I probably missed half the jokes. Not all of them -- there are some wonderful visual jokes, like the man whose wife wants the church's permission to have sex with him, so the couple goes to a convent and has sex surrounded by a circle of nuns (all of them discreetly facing away, of course).

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A Man for All Seasons (1988 TV Movie)

A version that is faithful to the stage play's script

21 December 1998

This made-for-TV version of "A Man for All Seasons" both wins and loses when compared to the more famous movie version of the show, which stars Paul Scofield as Thomas More. It wins, because it stays faithful to Mr. Bolt's original theatrical script, and so keeps much of the play's impact that was lost to "production values" in the big-budget movie release. It loses, in that the main characters, especially Mr. Heston's Thomas More, are weaker than those of the movie version. For example, Mr. Heston completely misses nuances of language that Mr. Scofield caught and used to great advantage; but the supporting actors in this version (Vanessa Redgrave as More's wife comes especially to mind) are far stronger than in the movie version. On the whole, though, I highly recommend that you see this version, mainly to watch Mr. Bolt's craftsmanship that was totally lost in the movie version.

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